by Nigel Percy

Created on: July 26, 2009

If ever there was a period when the phrase, 'poor, nasty, brutish and short' was applicable, then it was to the life of peasants in the Middle Ages.

Peasants were at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. They usually held their land in return for fealty to their lord. The lord might or might not have been absent for most of the year, but his stewards made sure that the terms of tenure were adhered to.

Generally, that meant payment of certain taxes, tithing of produce, and working on the lord's land. Sometimes there were additional duties such as maintaining roads and bridges; labor was the payment given.

There was, of necessity, a small number of the peasantry which was engaged in activities indirectly associated with agriculture. Milling, fencing, wheelwrights, weaving and the like. But the bulk of them worked the land; raising animals or crops. In either case, the working conditions were hard.

In the case of crop-growing, the farmland was usually two or more very large open fields. Each of these was then subdivided into strips of land which were allocated, often by the drawing of lots, amongst the families. Such an arrangement meant that one person's land was usually to be found spread over the fields, none of the strips adjoined each other, so there was extra time and effort spent in going from strip to strip.

Added to that was the fact that the peasantry was usually so poor that it was extremely rare for any one person to own a plough. The usual practice was that a plough was shared amongst the villagers, meaning that the timing of the work on the land was dependent upon the rest of the village. Such a communal effort meant, of necessity, a strict understanding of who was doing what and when and with which equipment.

The yields of crops were lower then than now. This meant that there was always the problem that, if the summer was poor, the villagers would starve. Certain of the seeds had to be stored for the next season and, without proper storage of the rest, various pests could decimate what was left over for food.

This was the reason for the mass slaughter of animals during autumn; there simply wasn't enough food to keep them alive throughout the winter. After slaughter, their bones were piled in the fields and burned. These 'bonefires' or bonfires provided valuable nutrients for the soil. The resulting flesh had to be preserved, either in salt or by smoking and had to last the winter. The few remaining animals were lived in the same dank, dark huts

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